Chapter 1
It was a perfectly innocuous facade for the scheme in question, so it naturally worked better than even its mastermind intended. Ironically, the reasons given for the research grant that led to the production of the prototype were to improve the ability of female soldiers, sailors, etc. to function during and after capture by enemy troops in a conflict situation. While women still largely didn't serve in combat, it was hoped that this would reduce the trauma and long-term psychological harm for them and female police or federal agents in extreme combat stress environments. It went unsaid that it would also lower women's negative responses to various "micro-aggressions" and other false forms of harassment or low-intensity forms of it. For the Pentagon, it sounded like a plus.
Unfortunately for the Pentagon, the clinical trials had another, unexpected result. Seven officers and sixteen enlisted women ended up committing adultery, getting pregnant while on deployment, or even sexually harassing male or female colleagues. At least under the present Uniform Code of Military Justice, it was not practical to use the formula, so it was not added to the ladies' bath products as initially planned. The official reason given was that the "extreme suggestibility or susceptibility of female respondents in clinical trials, coupled with hypersexuality induced as a result of the formula in question, represent a heightened risk to unit discipline, cohesion, and morale."
Additionally, the fact that the conditioner had been designed strictly with women and not both sexes in mind carried major political risks, should it be leaked to the press that something so "misogynistic" or "sexist" had been created. The Pentagon simply handed its remaining stock of the prototype conditioners, shampoo, body wash, and other such bath products back to the inventor and quietly told him, "thanks, but no thanks," though in nice, Pentagon, bureaucratic jargon, of course. It didn't destroy the stuff, but the brass decided that it didn't to be caught holding the bag for it. Therefore, it destroyed all evidence of its own possession as much as possible, shredded documents, deleted files, and let the inventor or designer deal with any potential fallout.
It had no idea what it was about to unleash on the world. The inventor had a lot of stock on his hands and no buyers. What would he do with his product? What could he do with it? He still had some legal bills to pay and a shortage of space. The Pentagon had never disclosed to him the exact nature of the issues that it had with his work, leaving all of its reasons vague when addressing him, even as it raised more specifics in internal (now mostly destroyed) data and files. A recently divorced workaholic who hadn't been thinking at all of possible sexual benefits for himself or the rest of humanity, it never occurred to him that his product had simply worked too well.
Now quietly pushed into early retirement in order to keep him silent and disassociate Uncle Sam from him (the Pentagon had literally pensioned off and paid him to take his stuff back, it was such a hot potato), Dr. Samuel Goldstein had a lot of time on his hands and a desperate need to get those boxes of feminine bath products out of his house. Sam, as he liked to be called, briefly considered dumping it on his ex-wife's yard and calling it "payment in kind" for her share of the home. Sam quickly decided that his ex might call neighborhood watch on him if she saw him in her neighborhood (she was that bizarre and unreasonable of late) so dismissed that idea. Liz had left him abruptly around the same time that the Pentagon had rejected his product, and at least part of Sam thought that it was due to the feeling that he was a failure. She lived with a "roommate" in a home whose ownership wasn't entirely clear to him, but at least she had opted not to keep the house.
Things changed on a Thursday morning, smack dab in the middle of the week, when the doorbell rang and Sam rushed out of the shower to answer the door. He had slept in a little, frankly because he had hit the sauce a bit more than usual the night before, and he had no particular plans that day. Still, it was about 10:30 or close to it, so it was morning, albeit late morning. Sam wore only a bath towel as he answered the door, so his chest was very bare, including all of the hair on it, and his skin was still quite wet.
"Hello, can I help?" Sam asked the neighbor, whom he had barely met in the past, a rather petite young woman in her early twenties.
"Woah, did I come at a bad time? I was showering, just like you ... but I'm out of conditioner. See how my hair looks? Still damp! Bad hair day, like for real, okay? I ... got dressed and went over here, hoping that you had some conditioner of some kind to borrow. I know that's much to ask, given that we don't even know each other's names. I barely know your wife's name and I haven't seen her around at all lately. Liz, wasn't it?
"So, anyway, is there any chance I can borrow a spare bottle of conditioner? I checked my bank balance and everything that I have is spoken for except literally sixty nine cents, which won't even buy a bottle in the fucking dollar store! I won't get any money in the account until tomorrow morning, I'm afraid. Pretty please? I'm Marley, by the way. Short for Marlena Juana Sanchez, though I look very white, I've been told," the cute, if a bit sheltered, brunette with the dimples and the Valley Girl lingo finally introduced herself to her neighbor.
"I'm Sam. Short for Samuel Yitzhak Goldstein. I'm a retired government worker, if you must know. Liz was my wife's name, but we just got divorced. That's why you haven't seen her around lately. It became final yesterday, in fact. That's why I have a hangover. I was ... uh, celebrating my new freedom as a single man, if you will. I just got out of the shower, which made me feel a bit more human, less simian, if you will. Nice to meet you at last, neighbor. As it happens, I have a spare bottle that my ex didn't take with her and I never discarded. Evidently, she wasn't a fan of it," Sam lied rather cleverly, seeing a chance to get rid of at least one bottle and also help Marley at the same time.
"Oh, thank you! That helps a lot! And, yeah, I totally get that girls can be very picky about their conditioners. I left a bottle at my ex-boyfriend's once, right about the time that I broke up with him because of a very silly argument that made even me feel that I'd been stupid. Naturally, my former best friend Shelly capitalized on my mistake and just grabbed him with both hands, but that's another story. It's a sore subject, don't know why I brought it up. Maybe I'm just distracted by the half-naked man in front of me and it's causing me to run my mouth a bit. Sorry about the TMI. For what it's worth, Liz needs glasses or contacts or something. If I was your wife, I'd hang onto you with a death grip or handcuff myself to you for fear that you'd let me go!" Marley blushed a little at her reaction.
"Um ... thanks. Anyway, here, let me get that bottle for you," Sam walked away (awkwardly, due to his hard-on at this point) back to the shower, where he indeed had a bottle that Liz had flatly refused to even try when he broached the subject.
